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My "favorite" irritation
Débuté par Donald Montaine, 10 aoû. 2017 22:45 - 19 réponses
Posté le 10 août 2017 - 22:45
Is there any way to change the default size of the code editor window when it opens? It always opens up at a size that takes almost all of the available screen area which is really inconvenient when several editing windows are open. It requires resizing almost every time I use it. Admittedly, not a big issue in the scheme of things, but it is my most frustrating 'feature' at the moment.
Posté le 11 août 2017 - 10:03
Hi Donald,

This is one of my "favorites", too. And it is a big thing:hot:, when you calculate the amount of mouse clicks needed to adjust the window to a proper size by the times you open a code editor window per day times 365... That's a "zillion" unnecessary clicks and as many seconds wasted annually, slowing down the development and wearing down your shoulder, elbow and wrist.

I wonder, whether they have fixed this in version 22...

Best regards
Ola
Posté le 11 août 2017 - 15:51
"I wonder, whether they have fixed this in version 22..."
Only if they can call it a "new feature".
Posté le 11 août 2017 - 18:08
Hi,

I think they are too embarrassed to fix such issues, because it will not look good in the brochure to announce features that should have been there already in the previous century.

Kind regards,
Piet
Posté le 12 août 2017 - 02:32
Hello

The fact that they haven't fixed it and that the "feature" has been implemented in most other edit windows, and that they ignore repeated calls to fix something so obvious, so easy to do and so useful clearly illustrates PCSoft's callous indifference to their clients.

It is a damaging policy that must inhibit their growth and I seriously wonder if they will be around for the long term.

I think the average age of this forum's members is over 50 - most of us have been here since it started and even before in the old forum. Who is going to replace us as PCSoft clients when we go?
I have shown Windev to young programmers, but they are not interested because it is not a mainstream language and would I be doing the best by them to encourage them to invest even some of their working life in PCSoft products ?

I am locked in, as I suspect many of us are, but when we are gone, is there going to be a new crop of programmers/developers to replace us - I doubt it.

The huge pity is that the products promise 200% and deliver maybe 90%. The 90% that works is very very good and is enough for me to develop with but the missing 10% represents a continual frustration and the daily uncertainty that your project will even start much less run all day without a crash wears you down. After awhile you don't even bother reporting issues because you know they are ignored and won't be fixed.

PCSoft's indifferent attitude towards their clients, the incredible disrespect shown to all their clients in pushing half finished "features" at us year after year and especially the disdain they show towards their non French clients (Frenglish in the help, no English LST) means they are doomed to remain a niche product for a dwindling group of small developers, but perhaps they are happy with that.


Regards
Al
Posté le 12 août 2017 - 09:49
Hi friends,

each environment for developing applications has its advantages and disadvantages. Every now and then I have to maintain some of our old applications and I can clearly see the reasons why we left those environments. Our company exists since 1982 (35 years) now and before that I did some programming using a bunch of different programming languages while working at such widely unknown companies like Zuse, IBM, Sperry Rand Univac and Compugraphic. Ok, I'm 73 now but I'm not going to retire soon.

In all those years I learned a lot about programming, about the becoming, fate and decline of applications, about customer beliefs etc. and reached some strong beliefs myself which I still hold to be true.

To make it short: How much time did you save in all the years you're using WINDEV just by clicking the GO button? (avoiding to go through the well-known save - compile - run cycle)

Believe me, there's no development environment, no computer language without its flaws, shortcomings and bugs. All of the more common languages / environments have at least a few advantages which make shine among most others on the market. I even remember some phone calls to a small US company named Microsoft in regards to some bugs in their CP/M BASIC compiler. I discussed things with a certain Mr. Gates who then told me to be one of the founders and owners of that company. And yes, it took some time but they fixed those bugs.

Back to PC Soft. PCS is a French company with mostly French developers. That makes it different from all other software / language / IDE developing companies we know. It's already a big difference between a US company and a British one. With WINDEV 5.5 PC Soft has been the first company which included color and styles in their product as a standard. At that time, around 2000, no US supplier cared a lot about that. Most applications were delivered in a gray or brownish look. If you wanted to have something different then you had to turn to a 3rd party supplier in order to add color & style to your C++ or VB programs.

Compared to Microsoft, PC Soft is a very small company. Developing a 4GL is a big job, Microsoft turned off Visual FoxPro and turned off LightSwitch ... obviously, 4GLs aren't part of their strategy. In general, I don't see a lot of 4GLs with a life expectancy of more than 10 years from now. As far as I can see, PC Soft will be still around being actively supported and extended in 2027 while many of these https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth-generation_programming_language will not be around.
Posté le 12 août 2017 - 12:30
Guenter,

I agree with you - no IDE is perfect and one must choose the tool that provides the best pros vs. cons for the job we want to do. I too have used quite a few (10+) development languages and IDEs in my time and they all had cool features and some "issues". Ultimately I have been quite lucky to have come across tools that suited my purpose quite well and I can handle a few cons provided the pros are sufficiently compelling. WinDev is not perfect but it has a lot of very useful and cool features that I greatly appreciate.
Posté le 12 août 2017 - 13:07
Yes. Guenter is correct. And of course, one man's favorite irritation is inconsequential to another. I use a large-screen multi-monitor setup, rarely close the IDE, and was blissfully unaware of this dreadful irritation. Each to his own.
Posté le 12 août 2017 - 14:38
Hello

I am not disputing that Windev is an amazing product.
My comments were to the attitude displayed by PCSoft to their clients.

The issue at hand, saving the position of the code editor, would be trivial to fix, given that they already do it for some of the other editors and indeed extend the ability to us to do so with our own software developed in Windev.

So, there is a long standing request to fix something that has been badly implemented from its first release, would be of great benefit to clients if fixed and requires a tiny effort to fix. I venture that all of us would do this for our own clients without a second thought and would have done so when it was brought to our attention.
Why is it so hard for PCSoft to do this simple thing for us ?

Regards
Al
Posté le 12 août 2017 - 15:28
Guenter
Of course what you say is correct but I think you are missing the point of Al's and other posts here.

Basically PCS work to their own agenda and seemingly do not give a damn about their user community.
Sure if you are fortunate and spend the time producing a demo project they occasionally issue a fix - but even when they do mostly it is only sent to the complaining developer.

The also have developed over the last few years a nigh-on pathological tendency to lie and mislead their users by announcing and then releasing software functionality that either does not work at all or is incomplete.

So so many examples but just a couple for now.....

v20 saw the announcement of MVP Rad.
Wow thought I that sounds useful and being a bit light myself on mysteries of classes thought this could be for me.
First was a surprise - Here we had a company, PCS, that markets it's cross platform capabilities and yet was releasing functionality the would, indded still does, on work with WD.
Secondly the RAD didn't produce a usable set of windows.
I sent them a project with 2 windows - 1. Theirs that did not work and 2. My own modified version that did.
Received a nice email saying it would be passed to the developers - yeah right.
v22 has come and gone and still MVP Rad has not changed.
Curiously though they done some work, without actually telling anyone, on the classes and their methods.
Only way you can tell though is by forensically inspecting the provided examples which are not, never have been, programs that were generated by the RAD they are supposedly demonstrating.
Now hands up here I do like MVP and being predominantly a windows developer use it wherever I can - love the concept of the 'presenter' and the general functionality it affords.
How do I manage that I here you ask - By painstakingly dissecting the code in the examples and build some 45 code bricks - a time consuming project in its own right.
I can now get a fully functioning Table and Form up and running in about 5 mins - That's OK but it isn't RAD.

And then we come to v22 with the announcement and release of the Word Processing module.
Where they really excelled themselves this time was by notifying me that it was incomplete, via a popup window, but only after I had made the purchase and by releasing a brochure with images of documents that clearly, having tested it, were impossible to produce.
There has been a thread on this so I will not ramble on but this is without a doubt PCS marketing teetering on the very edge of legality.

v23 must by now be on the cusp of being announced to French developers.
Sadly based on the lamentable history of PCS I have no real confidence that even then the WP module will be the 'as advertised' real deal.

Will I upgrade to v23? - Yes of course I will as for me I can achieve all that I need with WD.
Though I really could do without these 'flagship' promises that seem to have been broken before they are even written about.
Posté le 12 août 2017 - 16:36
I use v22 and no it is not fixed. There are two companies I have worked with over the years whose products I liked but whose culture was difficult; Power Basic and PC Soft. The difference is that Power Basic was a rock solid product which can not be said of Windev.

There are companies that I like a lot better as far as their responsiveness to their customers. Unfortunately, all of them have a focus that is different than what I need. Two I really like are Zojo and Livecode. However, both of them are primarily focused on the Apple market, even though they do have Windows versions. And both of them lack the comprehensive visual development IDE (such as that in Clarion and WinDev) that I like to use.
Posté le 12 août 2017 - 19:22
Quote
DerekT

Basically PCS work to their own agenda and seemingly do not give a damn about their user community.

Hi Derek,
indeed, this is the case. Once upon a time, PC Soft sold a blockbuster application, "Hi Screen", which allowed to design screens (input / output logic included) for DOS programs. Years ago, at an Austrian customer's site I stumbled over a product which did the timekeeping for that company. Hey, there was a name on it: PC Soft. What I want to say with that: PCS, at least the top management, has a lot of experience with customers and applications in the field.

Which leads me to one of my favorite books "The Inmates Are Running the Asylum" by Alan Cooper. Among many important things about user interfaces he says that software companies experience two threats.

* One, the inmates (aka "the programmers") want to take control of the product/s. I've seen weakly managed companies to hand over control of a software product to one of their programmers ... I cannot remember a single happy end.

* The second threat is that customers want to take control of a product. Alan Cooper (inventor of Visual Basic) calls it "riding the tiger" - a relatively unimportant customer mounts the tiger and starts to direct its activity. If the tiger is not aware of its strength then that small and unimportant customer will eventually drive him into his demise. There's only one institution to direct the fate of a software product: it's the owner of the software! This may be to the disgust of some customers, this may be to the disapproval of some in the staff ... the financial risk is on the side of the owners and they have every right to do the decisions.

Now, I strongly believe that PC Soft management experienced both threats in the past and behaves accordingly. We, their customers and users of their products do not approve of their behavior in every respect but we should avoid trying to ride the tiger.
Posté le 13 août 2017 - 14:02
Guenter
I believe I read that book, or something very similar at one time.

Suspect it needs updating to now to include, based on PC Soft's current modus operendi, a section on what happens when the 'Marketing' department of the company takes over control.
Posté le 13 août 2017 - 18:46
Hi Derek,
"necessity is the mother of invention" ... as you probably know, there are two development systems in French language (WX + 4D). Most French developers do not update their IDE in regular intervals like most of us do. You have to kick them out of their seats and show them a bait which they really want to get. Additionally, PC Soft tries a lot like offering a laptop for 1 €, like including "gifts" in the parcels for the manuals and so on. Plus, each year they have to offer spectacular new features, better than the competition's and lure users into an update by those notorious girls in their brochures ... French-speaking users are by far the larger group of WX-users. Btw, PC Soft does not ask for royalties for deployed copies which definitely sets them apart from 4D who is asking for a yearly maintenance fee for their products. That's another solution.
Posté le 14 août 2017 - 01:02
Hi Ola,

did you explicitly request that feature??
Did you tell them that the other windows are OK ?
Posté le 14 août 2017 - 09:28
Hi all,

I don't want to ride PCSoft's tiger. I don't even want to ride their moped:rp:. I just want a simple, continuously irritating problem fixed, please.

The most weird feature in this problem is that -- as far as I understand -- it would be so easy to fix; it shouldn't take much more than a few minutes from somebody who knows what he's doing. But still, no, they won't do it, no matter what:eek:!

Best regards
Ola
Posté le 14 août 2017 - 22:41
Hi Guenter
Can't speak for Ola of course but I specifically requested this as far back as WD11 & again in WD14. I gave up after that but it is incredibly annoying, on a par with the bloody awful ribbon in the IDE & both things which I get sick & tired of adjusting every time.

Somewhere I'd still have the reference numbers but in both cases the response was that it has been referred to the developers. Must be a big job & presumably they're still working on it!:D

David
Posté le 15 août 2017 - 21:11
Hi Guenter,

I don't remember whether I have reported this specific problem to PCSoft, and I'm too lazy to search my old archives. But that is not important. I would expect, that if there really are over 100 000 French users of Wx products, at least a few of them would have got as irritated over this easily repairable problem as the few users here, and would have reported this in a language that is better undestood by PCSoft.

I am also quite sure that they follow this forum, and if they have any wits at all, they could draw the necessary conclusion and do what needs to be done.

But of course I understand that they have much better things to do, such as photographing those girls for the next pretty but untruthful sales brochure:rolleyes:.

Best regards
Ola
Posté le 16 août 2017 - 06:59
Hi David & Ola,

please send them a "feature suggestion" as often as you can. One of the factors for a feature / error to get to the top of the list is the number of complaints from the user community.

Yes, this forum is a) partially copied to the English PCS forum and b) is read by those who are technically interested and able to understand the postings. However, the "list" is fed by your requests & reports only.
Posté le 16 août 2017 - 11:39
Quote
Al

I think the average age of this forum's members is over 50 - most of us have been here since it started and even before in the old forum. Who is going to replace us as PCSoft clients when we go?

I have shown Windev to young programmers, but they are not interested because it is not a mainstream language and would I be doing the best by them to encourage them to invest even some of their working life in PCSoft products ?

I am locked in, as I suspect many of us are, but when we are gone, is there going to be a new crop of programmers/developers to replace us - I doubt it.

I have to admit about the average age of PCS developers... I went to most TDF events until the end of last year. Indeed, the average age of the public must be over 50 according to me with developers who are still doing mostly Windows Forms type of applications with some additional limited web or mobile extensions to it. At least that's the feedback I got when talking to several of them at the bar after the many presentations I attended...

I, like Al, also showed WX to many young(er) developers (I'm in my mid 40's) doing mostly todays component and (internal and external) services based (web) architectures from the start and I can't blame them when they reply to me: "it looks kind of cool, but it certainly isn't the future and it looks darn proprietary and closed as well"... And then we even haven't discussed the non-existent community that could reinforce, extend and drive the platform even to a higher level. Like Al says: "I'm locked in, as I suspect many of us are". It certainly is a business model of a long due past and I'm no longer willing to participate in it...

Every month I get at least one and often more e-mails requesting for updates on my published WX OO-Framework making me count that at least more than one hundred developers are using it as a basis to develop with. Unfortunately I have to disappoint them saying that the platform can not come up to its promises and that on my many repeated requests for small and larger enhancements towards PCS to make it better not a single was granted let alone investigated. It's impossible to provide a sort of add-on that is seemingly used on a relative wide scale without a minimal support from the vendor in the case of a completely locked down (locked-in) platform as the WX one.

I'm 46 and feel the tool no longer can serve my future needs. Another lesson I learned with WB is this one: a web development tool cannot claim you can build rock solid web applications without knowing at least a big part of html5, css3 and a minimum of javascript and it's many frameworks like jQuery, angular, etc... And if you need those skills anyway, then why not simply jump ship to more open and larger supported platforms... Since two years I am in the midst of the many brain gymnastics periods in life one needs to go through in order not to become lazy and make that giant leap.

Paraphrasing Darwin about species:
The success of programmers will be determined by their ability to adapt to an ever changing environment
(The same of course goes for the vendors/creators of the tools these developers use)

It feels good to hear I am not alone in my constructive criticism towards PCS.
I hope the marketing department (running PCS apparently) has the ability to change its rifle from shoulder one day by finally listening to their customers...

It'll be the only way not to become a dinosaur and vanish ultimately ;-)

All the best,

Peter Holemans